Padres

Padres at Dodgers

Dodgers

4

11 innings

LOS ANGELES 
With all the other personnel changes the Padres have undergone since trading away Adrian Gonzalez — and it’s only been 22 months — fully 20 of the 27 active Padres players for the Labor Day opener of a three-game series at Dodger Stadium were never one of his teammates in San Diego.

“For a number of our players, it won’t be any different,” said manager Bud Black before the game. “Andrew Werner, for one.”

A pitcher who was in his second season of independent-league ball in 2010, the left-handed Werner not only held Gonzalez hitless in his first National League game against the Padres, but struck out eight Dodgers over six innings. For the Padres, however, that was barely just the half of it.

Even another three-RBI night for Chase Headley went for naught in a 4-3 loss to the Dodgers. Andre Ethier tied the game with a solo homer in the ninth off Luke Gregerson, then scored the game-winner on A.J. Ellis’ walk-off single in the 11th inning off Cory Burns.

Gregerson had gotten the Padres out of a jam with Matt Kemp’s two-out, eighth-inning groundout and opened the ninth with a strikeout of Hanley Ramirez, who’d tied the game at 2-2 with an earlier home run, but Ethier parked one just beyond the reach of right fielder Mark Kotsay in right field.

“Luke’s been really good for us,” said Black. “He’s been one of the best relief pitchers in the National League over the last month.”

Naturally, all three of the Padres’ runs were brought in by Headley, continuing his astonishing and sudden rise toward the top of the list of baseball’s best run-producers. When last Gonzalez was with the Padres, you may remember, Headley was the other corner infielder, a third baseman whose game lacked power.

As if transformed into one of the major leagues’ leading sluggers and RBI men over the past two months, Headley came to L.A. a day after driving in six runs in one afternoon at Coors Field, and he immediately brought home two more with a left-handed shot into the right-field seats off Dodgers starter Joe Blanton.

It was his 16th homer since the All-Star Break, the most by a Padres hitter over the second half since the 16 recorded by Gonzalez in both 2007 and ’09. His 24th homer of the season eclipsed by 20 his grand total for all of 2011.

On base for Headley’s homer was right fielder Will Venable, who had looked the picture of misery in the clubhouse before the game, one of a few Padres players lugging around a flu bug. Moreover, left fielder Carlos Quentin was a late scratch from the starting lineup with irritation of his right knee, though he pinch-hit in the 11th.

With five strikeouts in the first two innings, the Dodgers didn’t get a baserunner to second on Werner until the fifth. That was Luis Cruz, who singled, went to second on Blanton’s one-out sacrifice bunt and scored on Mark Ellis’ single.